Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Plankton

Alternative answers.
1. Filamentous algae (FA), Chara, or submerged plants are typically nutrient hogs and if present in fair amounts, they will overpower and out grow the ability of phytoplankton to bloom. If a pond has about 5%-15% coverage of FA then it is my opinion the FA should be first killed and a day or two later add fertilizer to feed the current phytoplankton so it can bloom and shade the return of the FA. Sometimes killing the FA will kill the competition, relese sme nutrients from the FA and stimulate the phytoplankton to grow & start a bloom which without more nutrients the bloom will die out or gradually decrease not too much later. You typically need to 'feed' the bloom to keep it going long term. Phytoplankton can create a bloom relatively quickly - it has fasterer reproductive growth than FA or submerged plants including Chara.
2. FA typically outcompetes the phytoplankton if the FA has a good head start. It can depend on the percent abundance of each. It wouldn't suprise me if some species of FA exert a chemical inhibitor to phytoplankton. Research has shown rooted submerged plants produce chemical inhibitors to phytoplankton.
3. When fish hatcheries fertilize to produce a plankton bloom the most common temperature for the bloom to get going strong is 60F +-5F. In spring you want to watch the weather forcasts and fertilize prior to an upcoming warming trend. There are exceptions; see below, as usual, it all depends.
4. Typically when water temps gradually cool to below 60F then the activity and rapid reproduction of the plankton slows down significantly. HOwever this applies to those species that thrive in water above 60F. I have seen water stay green all winter in manure ponds with rich phosphorus concentrations. There are phytoplankton that will thrive and bloom in cool and cold water depending on the specie of phytoplankton. Thus the algae species in the plankton will be different as daylength and water temperatures change seasonally. Normally most zooplankton species do not bloom in cold water due to most of them are cold blooded and they are warm water species in the normal warmwater pond and they are not well adapted to reproduce in cool-cold water. They can typically survive but don't do much reproducing in late fall-winter, very early spring below 55-60F. There are a few cold water adapted zooplankton species but most warmwater ponds do not have them because the cold water species get eliminated in summer either due to too warm of water or too low of DO. Most cold water zooplankton require high DO similar to the reqirements of trout. When the trout die in a pond the cold water zooplankton and other stenotherm invertebrates also are eliminated.